thebusnovel Chapter 462 Spark Operation System Released
Chapter 462 Spark Operation System Released
The press conference is scheduled for 10:00 AM at the Beijing International Convention Center.
Wang Jianguo arrived at the site at four in the morning. He checked each of the demo units on the stage, restarting each one three times. The young man in charge of the lighting was dozing off next to the control panel when Wang Jianguo woke him up. "Go through the switching sequence on the big screen again, don't make any mistakes later." The young man sat up, rubbing his eyes, and muttered something under his breath.
People started entering at eight o'clock. There were twice as many people as expected, and the staff had to add three rows of chairs at the back. People were also standing in the aisles; some reporters were leaning against the wall with recorders, and some developers were squatting on the steps with backpacks. The air conditioning was on the lowest setting, but it was still stuffy inside.
At 9:50, the lights dimmed. The large screen lit up, displaying a phone-shaped outline, from which four characters slowly emerged—Spark OS.
Ling Yun walked out from the left side of the stage. He was wearing a dark blue shirt today, without a tie, and the platinum cufflinks on his cuffs flashed under the spotlight.
"Good morning, everyone." He walked to the center of the stage and stood there without a script. "Today I'm going to show you something."
He picked up the StarPhone 1 from the podium and pressed the Home button. The large screen immediately switched to the phone's display.
"This is Spark OS."
The whole place fell silent.
Ling Yun swiped his thumb across the screen from left to right, flipping to the next page of the desktop. The icons were arranged in four rows and three columns, with a line of small text below each icon. He then pinched the screen with two fingers, shrinking all the applications into a card view that floated above the desktop wallpaper.
A low murmur arose from the audience—not applause, but the kind of sound people unconsciously make when they see something new.
"Multi-touch. Swipe, zoom, drag." Ling Yun said as he demonstrated, his tone no different from when he was talking about products in the meeting room. "Once you get used to these gestures, you'll feel awkward using a button phone again."
He tapped the app store icon. The interface unfolded, with a recommended section at the top and a list of categories below. He scrolled down, and the app list scrolled quite a distance.
"The app store officially launched today. The first batch includes over a hundred apps, including WPS, UCWEB, Hanvon handwriting input, iFlytek voice input, Gaode Maps, and a dozen or so games." He clicked on an icon, and a slice of fruit appeared on the screen. "This is called Fruit Ninja, made by an independent developer. He used to work on construction sites, and taught himself Spark's SDK to code in the evenings. Within a week of its release, it had over 100,000 downloads."
Some people in the audience applauded. Ling Yun put her phone back on the podium.
"The revenue sharing ratio between the app store and developers was 80/20 for the first two years—developers got 80% and Spark got 20%." He paused, "I talked to a few developers last year and I said that as long as I'm still at Spark, developers will always get the lion's share. Today, that promise has come true."
The applause grew louder.
He picked up his phone and tapped the Xingyu icon. "Xingyu also released the native version of Xinghuo OS today. Voice calls, file transfers, and Moments are all optimized for touch." He opened a chat window, pressed the speak button with his finger, and said, "For example, if you want to send a voice message to a friend—" He released his finger, and a voice bubble popped up. The operation process was displayed simultaneously on the large screen, and the voice bubble flashed in the chat window before starting to play.
He then opened WPS. "This is a version that Kingsoft specifically made for Xinghuo OS." He created a new document on the spot and wrote four characters on the screen using Hanvon handwriting input method: "星火燎原" (Xinghuo Liaoyuan). The characters were converted into text as soon as they were written, with almost no delay in recognition.
Qiu Bojun, who was sitting in the front row, stood up, bowed slightly, and then sat down again.
"There's one more." Ling Yun clicked on an icon called Xingyu Conference Room, and four video windows appeared on the interface. He clicked the invite button, and the large screen immediately switched to a remote connection screen—He Xiaopeng's face appeared on it. He was sitting in the UCWEB office, with a whiteboard covered with sticky notes behind him.
"Mr. Ling, can you hear me?" He Xiaopeng waved in the video.
"It's very clear." Ling Yun turned his phone towards the audience. "He Xiaopeng, the founder of UCWEB. He's in Guangzhou right now. We're at the press conference in Beijing. You'll see for yourselves later."
He Xiaopeng smiled in the video, "President Ling, we have completed the adaptation of UCWEB's Spark OS version, and it is at least three times faster for users than the previous Symbian version."
"Save that for the press conference later." Ling Yun hung up the video call and placed his phone on the podium. "Video calls and remote collaboration—the Xingyu Conference Room uses Nebula Technology's real-time communication engine at its core. We've been developing this engine for two years, and today is the first time we're using it publicly."
The applause rose again, louder than ever before.
Ling Yun stood behind the podium, waiting for the applause to stop on its own.
"Finally, I have something to say." He pressed a button on the remote control, and a URL appeared on the large screen. "From today onwards, the complete source code of Spark OS is entirely open source. Any manufacturer or individual can download, use, and modify it for free from the Spark Open Source Community."
There was a few seconds of complete silence from the audience. Then someone in the back row stood up. It was He Xiaopeng from UCWEB; he had somehow come out from backstage.
"Mr. Ling, are you serious?"
"I had the legal department review the open-source license for three months." Ling Yun looked at him. "Are you serious?"
Applause and murmurs mingled together, creating a buzzing sound in the hall.
"Let's make a hypothetical scenario," Ling Yun said, lowering his voice slightly. "If one day, a Chinese mobile phone manufacturer is cut off from access to an operating system license, no problem. Spark OS is available on the open-source community; you can take it and use it. If the manufacturer wants to customize or optimize it, no problem, the source code is all there." He took two steps forward. "That's the only reason Spark OS is open-source. It's not charity; it's because we don't want our operating system to be used as a weapon."
The murmurs from the audience ceased.
Ling Yun stood at the edge of the stage, a spotlight shining down on him. Behind him, a new line of text appeared on the large screen: "Spark OS Open Source Project." Below it were rows and rows of Git repository addresses.
"In 1996, a few classmates and I opened the first internet cafe in Jinan. Back then, we believed that computers would change the world." He placed the remote control on the podium and said in a low voice, "Now I believe in something else—the operating system of mobile phones can no longer be controlled by others."
As soon as he finished speaking, a man stood up from a corner of the audience. It was Ni Guangnan. The old man was wearing an old dark blue jacket today, and his hair was combed neater than usual. He didn't applaud; he just stood there, staring at the line of open-source addresses on the big screen for a long time.
Li Mo, who was standing next to him, whispered, "Old Ni?"
Ni Guangnan took off his glasses, wiped the lenses, and put them back on. He said something to Li Mo, not loudly, but everyone around heard him: "I've waited twenty years, and this day has finally come."
Li Mo wrote the sentence down in his phone's notes app. His thumb trembled slightly as he typed.
After the press conference ended, Ling Yun was surrounded by reporters for almost twenty minutes. By the time he walked out of the conference center, it was almost dark. A cold wind blew in from Chang'an Avenue, and he shivered.
Zhao Hu drove the car over, and Ling Yun opened the door and got in. His phone vibrated in his coat pocket—it was a text message from An Shiyu.
"My daughter saw you on TV. She said, 'Daddy, what happened to you? You got into that little box!'"
Ling Yun chuckled and leaned back in his chair. He turned his phone over and saw the words engraved on the back: "Running a business isn't about making money, it's about solving problems."
"Going back to Jinan?" Zhao Hu asked, glancing at him in the rearview mirror.
"Go back." Ling Yun rolled down the car window a crack, letting in a gust of cold wind that stung his eyes. "Where's Old Ni?"
"Li Mo took him back to his hotel. The old man said he wants to have a conference call with us tonight to discuss the next version."
"Tonight?" Ling Yun took out her phone and checked the calendar. "Tonight won't work. Send Li Mo a message and tell him to move it to tomorrow morning. I need to video chat with my daughter tonight."
The car drove onto Chang'an Avenue. Office buildings on both sides of the road were lit up, their windows stretching out in rows. The street scene receded outside the car window, and his phone vibrated again—this time it was Wang Jianguo calling from Jinan. The message preview that popped up on the screen was just one line: "President Ling, the open source community's servers are overwhelmed."